Velisahn
by Dr Murdock Kawfi
Summary: Atrus finds himself alone for the first time in his life. His sons, Sirius and Achnar, are in hiding, but continue to wreak havoc over his Ages. Saddened by the loss of his last friend, he finds himself looking for a new life in a new Age.
1. Prolouge

Velisahn 97.4.13

Atrus held the woman in his arms, tears running down his face. He made quite the sight, a Creator holding his dying subject in his arms. He stared into the woman's eyes, whose own seemed to have dulled. Her body lived on, but her mind had long ago left. He pressed his mouth to hers, helping her draw her final shuddering breath, which she used up on her last word: "Velisahn."

He bit his lip and clutched the woman's body to his chest, drawing a long, sad sigh. After a long moment, he slowly stood. Carrying her in his arms like the bride she never was, he brought her outside. He set her down and then started to dig in the flower garden. Nothing disturbed his work, all around him silence rang through an Age once teeming with life, and though the moon was full, Atrus felt none of it's cheer. He dug the grave in silence, thinking about what this meant. The last living human in Actair had died... and with her the history and legacy her people left behind. Atrus had found her 3 years earlier, and though she was young, only in her twenties at the time, she aged at an impeccable rate. Tonight, she had appeared to be in her late eighties. Atrus had never learned enough of her native language to find out exactly what was wrong, and though he tried many times to teach her English, and about the ages, his efforts seemed futile. But still he had returned, for he was the only one left she had. Every time he saw her, he couldn't help but wonder if it was his repeated visits that were killing her. But he had told himself this was nonsense.

He finished his work at last, and lay her to rest in the grave. He had no idea how much time had gone by, or even if it was any at all, for time in Actair was a delicate thing. During his firsts visits, he had been reluctant to stay long, fearing that time was dilated to such an extreme point that he'd return aged. However, it seemed to Atrus that he was unaffected by the strange Time of Actair, and thus his visits became more and more frequent over the course of the years. As he began to fill the dirt back in, he remembered the second time he came to Actair to visit the woman. She was a good ten years older then the week before, and seemed alarmed that he had not aged even a year since she'd last seen him. In fact, she was so alarmed that she tried to banish him by means of a strange native magic that made his throat sting, but left him unharmed.

The third time was when she discovered his linking books, and hailed him as a holy spirit. At least.. that's what Atrus thought she'd been doing. At the time it was quite flattering, but he simply recorded this in his journal and pushed the other thoughts aside. He didn't want to end up like his father... He finished his task of filling in the grave. The woman, whose name he never found out, had left behind a house full of interesting things that might give him clues to what was happening to the time in this Age. But not tonight... tonight he would drink to her honor, and leave her things at rest.


	2. Chapter One

Actair 110.11..29

It was late in the year, and the broken skies outside the stone hut were swirling with an evil black and purple. Atrus stood out in what had been a garden, but was now nothing more then a plot of barren earth. His hand shaded his deep brown eyes as he searched, though he knew it was of no use. He peered through the clouds, looking for the ridge on the far side of the valley, the Appearance Point in this world. it was no good though... None at all. If he couldn't see the ridge there was no way he'd ever see if someone had appeared on it.

Atrus, after a long time, turned and entered the ruin of a house. Inside was a massive clutter of things, most of which were mismatched, salvaged from other ruins of what used to be an entire city of little round stone houses. The house had no door, only a crude leather curtain that Atrus had made from the skin of his last kill. She had been an elegant deer, a mother of a young fawn, whom Atrus had seen many times outside his window. It pained him to kill her, more then anyone would understand, but he had to eat. He would have starved otherwise. He killed he fawn as well, to spare it a painful death that would otherwise befall it, and used every part of both the creatures. The fawn's skin had gone into making a water skin for long trips, sewn together with a needle of it's own bone.

He had dried and salted the meat, and there was still a plentiful supply. And yet... Atrus was not content. He knew as he sat by the small amount of light and warmth that his fire offered him, that he would soon be leaving this place. Already he was making preparations, salvaging what he could, packing it away. A buck had given him enough meat to store provisions for his voyage, (the one's he'd brought from his old home had long ago run out) and it's skin had made an excellent packing blanket. It was much work, to rebuild his voyaging pack, but the bag still held as much as it had before. He had procured the item from one of his oldest ages, Edanna. It was spun out of the fibers of the Bungee Vine, making it stretchy enough to hold things twice or even three times its usual size.

He did not however, pack his usual things into the bag. His journals, and other Age and Linking Books, had all been moved to a secret place down in the swamp, locked in a water tight steel box and hidden in the muck. Here, he was confident, they would be safe from his sons until he managed to finish his new Age and move there. His only problem was a Linking Book, which he would have to use to reach his new Age. Linking books stay behind when you leave a place... and he no longer had the woman whose house he inhabited to cover his trail. Had she been with him now, he would have instructed her to burn the book after he left. He knew she would have done it.

That was it! That was the answer. He'd build a pyre, with all of the belongings he was leaving behind, and stand on the top of it to link out. The book would be burnt along with all the other evidence that might show Sirius and Achnar where he had gone. Yes... that was the only way. With a small nod, he placed his current journal into the bag. After a moment of pause, he turned and diped his pen into the ink, writing a library of blank books into this new Age, for him to make use of. He had chosen nature as the dominant feature in Velisahn, feeling it gave him the best hiding places and protection, if his sons ever DID find him. Still, he was sure that by burning the linking book, he'd be safe.

Sighing, he finished his packing and sat back in the old rocking chair. Dipping his pen again into the bottle of ink, he continued to work diligently, intent on finishing this Age so that he could safely move. Velisahn was so far a lovely and promising piece of work, with trees that were actually natural towers to house him and his library. Everything was water and wind powered, or else powered by creatures in symbiosis, like in Edanna. He smiled to himself as he finished the description of the third and final island. He paused, considering adding something. He nibbled on the end of his feather pen as he thought, and then changed his mind. Going back to make things more vivid and prominent, rather then add more to the Age. If this was to be his new home, it had to be strong, not expansive. Strong and stable. He added in the possibilities of civilization, and ruins of an ancient people's city. He paused, and wrote down the history in his journal. If he was going to start a new life in Velisahn, it shouldn't be all alone. No, he'd need company.

He chewed on his lip, and with a shaking hand finished the last pen stroke of the page, and closed the heavy leather master book. Then he began flip through it again, in an almost indecisive way, searching for a place to make the Appearing Point for his linking book. He decided that it would be the point furthest from his home to be, for dual reasons. Firstly, he'd be able to see how the Age manifested, and Secondly, if the linking book was not destroyed, he'd be safer. Opening the blank Linking Book, he began to copy the description of the Appearing Point, fleshing it out. It was tedious work, making a linking book. Atrus had never liked it, but he flowed all of his efforts into it, for the Linking books where far more important then the Master Copies, to a point.

He remembered his father instructing him one day that any story, any imaginative world, is an Age, and that what makes it an Age in the sense that they knew, was a strong linking book. Atrus himself, had gotten it down to a science. Every linking book was 300 pages long exactly, and described in such intimate detail the place, that his transitions where far smoother then those of his father's. His father could never quite accept that about Atrus, and eventually cast him from the house because of it. Atrus hadn't minded. His father had been tyrannical, egotistical, and generally mean. He did however, give Atrus the one thing that had stuck with him, even when his wife could not. His Ages. His only remaining friends.

He shook his head violently to cast such thoughts from his mind before continuing on his work. If he was to start his life over, he'd have to refrain from thinking about the past. With a heavy sigh, his paused in his writing to pull on his socks, as it was quite cold. They where his only pair, and well in need of a bath. Their checkered pattern was hardly noticeable with the dust from the path. Frowning, he stood and washed them in a barrel of water, hanging them on the hearth to dry.

The scent of food reached his nose, and he knelt down to stir his stew that was hanging over the fire. It was made of a white bean, making it largely cream colored, and was spiced with herbs that Atrus had gathered and dried earlier in the year. It was quite thick and good smelling. He smiled to himself a little and finished stirring, and then took the pot off of the fire and set it on the earthen floor.

The storm outside raged harder, rain soaking the earth in front of the deer skin he had tacked up. The skin itself was was very wet, and threatened to blow away. Letting the small stew pot cool, he went to adjust the skin. The wind whipped violently around the house, and the soaked skin wasn't repelling water as well as he had hoped. The moment he'd undone the ties, the skin slipped out of his grasp and started waving in the storm. Cursing to himself, he pulled his already soaked coat tighter around his shoulders and stepped out into the cold. The skin fluttered stubbornly away from him, insistent on not being caught. It was with great effort that he managed to capture the skin again and fix it more securely over the door. With this new effort to keep out the storm, he proceeded to remove his wet clothes.

In the past he had been quite reluctant to do this, as he had no spare to wear, however, he must now face the facts that if he didn't remove them he'd become ill. Hanging them over the mantel, next to his dried herbs and jerky, he chose to settle in front of the fire, on top of the buckskin blanket. Shivering, he drew his knees to his chest, and scooted closer. Using a large wooden cooking spoon, he began to eat the stew directly from the pot. It was warm and life giving, though it had no particular taste. When he had finished, and retrieved his ink and partially completed linking book to distract him from the cold. As he began to work on it, he felt sure he would finish by the end of the night.


	3. Chapter Two

Actair 110.11.30

Atrus awoke to a heavy pour, which, as he was relieved to hear, was steady, and not whipped about by high winds. Still, such a rain made his plan of a pyre a difficult thing to achieve. He found himself laying on his blanket before the fire, and quickly got up and dressed in his mostly dry clothes. Eating a meager breakfast of the remaining unpreserved food, (Largely vegetables he'd gathered from the garden,) he folded up his blanket and place it in his pack before pulling on his socks and shoes. With one last glance around, he was sure that he was ready.

He stepped out, leaving his pack inside the house, as he looked around for a place to build the pyre. Out of habit, he glanced up at the ridge above the valley, just to be sure no one had appeared there. Seeing no one, he moved down the path towards the rest of the village. He had a certain house in mind to be the host of his grand fire, one made of wood, and not stone. He reached the house in question and pushed open the waterlogged door. The inside looked as bleak and miserable as Atrus felt as he rounded up all the odds and ends in the shack, and put them in the middle of the room. To his great relief, many things where burnable. He hauled the cot of large palm leaves out, and then smiled to himself and turned, leaving the house.

The walk back to his own hut seemed longer then it had been on his way out, and when he finally reached it, he picked up his pack, along with all the belonging he'd added to the house. This included his many empty ink pots, broken quills, and various animal pelts. The last pelt was the one that hung, soaking wet, over the door. He tore it down, and carried it with him down the path to the shack. The water dripped down his shirt, in spite of the heavy coat he was wearing, and made him shiver. He walked quickly, trying to keep everything as dry as possible, pausing only to sneeze briefly under a tree.

He stopped again at the door of the hut, and set the dry things just inside. Getting on his knees, he started to dig in the mud, using just his hands. It was cold and slimy between his fingers at he dug the hole deeper and deeper. At about two feet deep, he shoved the buckskin down inside and then reburied it. Hopefully the debris from the fire would cover his hand prints. Once this was done, he stood, wiping his hands on his pants, and slipped inside. He added his other possessions to the burn pile and then put on his pack, linking book in hand. Using his flint and steel, he struck a spark, and lit the pile beneath him. As it started to grow, he opened the Linking book and set his palm on the page, reading the words, the world of Actair, quickly getting engulfed in flames, warbled and disappeared. In it's place appeared a grove of trees around a small pond, blurry, but present.

Velisahn 1.1.1

Atrus focused intently on this new vision, and felt excitement overtake him as it hardened into reality. He looked around at the pool, just exactly as he had described it. It was at the top of a hill, shrouded in glittering trees, and smoother then glass. The stars twinkled merrily in it's reflection, dotted with nebulae and other colorful twinkling eye candy. He took a long, deep breath of the summer air. It was cool against the inside of his lungs, as if about to turn to fall at any moment. Atrus smiled in spite of himself, and then took a seat at the bank of the pool, staring into it. An exact copy of himself stared back, but Atrus hardly recognized it. He hadn't had a mirror in the years he'd spent in Actair. His hair was long and wild, getting tangled with his beard, and his eyes were long lost behind the matted insanity of it all.

He frowned. He was not the tidy man he imagined himself to be. He half considered pitching himself headfirst into the water, but in spite of all of his precautions against anyone following him, he was paranoid. This new age, Velisahn, was the only one that had not been raped by his sons, and he was not about to give them the chance to do that. He slowly stood up and picked up his pack, moving on down the path in the woods.

The path was lit by lanterns that hung from the trees by vines, inhabited by fairies. He had rather liked the idea when he wrote it in, but he noticed, (With a small chuckled to himself) that the fairies refused to stay to their assigned lanterns, instead, long patches of the road were dark, followed by a short circle of very bright light where the fairies would be having a party in one or two of the lanterns. Atrus didn't mind though, it gave the night an infectiously festive atmosphere. Around another bend the path split into two. Consulting his memory, he took the left fork, where the lighting change from fairies to glowing mushrooms that grew on the trees. He paused to examine one, admiring how they grew, and found himself filled with love at how it all had turned out.

He continued, humming to himself, feeling his unease grow less and less with every step away from the Appearing Point. He paused at a tree that had particularly large glowing blue mushrooms all the way up it. They created a lit step ladder, and he started to climb. The top left him on a tree branch so thick, it was easily a walk way. He followed the path of blue fungus through the maze of branches, before taking anther fork. This wound around the outside of a cliff. Atrus' only light now was that of the full moon, but that was plenty. He paused and stared out at the ocean around his island. He could see another island on the horizon, and to his intrigue, this one had a bed of lights in it's valley. A village perhaps? He smiled and continued on his way.

The path was long, and for the most part too dark to see, but he enjoyed the walk none the less. He made his way up another tree level, and crawled through a hidden log. He congratulated himself on this touch of privacy. His home would be nearly impossible to locate. As he emerged from the top of the log and climbed into the trunk of a tree, he thought for a moment of Catherine.. she'd always said he over reacted to things.

Shaking her form his mind, he got to his feet and lit up an oil lamp. The light flooded the house. It was carved from the heartwood, so that the tree remained alive. It was 100 feet in diameter, and inside Atrus had a ladder that was carved into the wood and went straight up. This gave him several stories of home. The bottom story was the entry way, and had nothing but a closet for his coat and shoes, and a laundry and wash room , with a fireplace to dry the clothes. The floors were plain wood to clean up spills. His second story was a kitchen, complete with another fireplace, right above the first. It was already stocked with pots and pans, though it had no food actually in it. He nodded in approval and climbed up another story. A living room, carpeted with green, fuzzy moss, sporting yet another fireplace, with bookshelves and a writing desk for him to work. He smiled and lit the lamp in this room as well, setting his pack down. He sat down at the desk chair to take off his shoes and coat, and then pulled out his journal. In the desk he found new quills and ink, just as he had written. Smiling wider now, he started to record all his thoughts in his journal.

It was an hour before he finished, turned off his lamp, and continued up the ladder to the next room. The top of the tower, his bedroom. It was a rich, four poster bed with red, luxurious blankets. This is what he'd been looking forward to the most. The last fireplace vented a few feet above the room, but still well hidden in the forest of giant trees. He congratulated himself on the artistry of the house before stripping down and climbing into bed at last. It was soft and warm, and Atrus had only to roll over before he slipped into sleep.

Actair 110.11.30

Achanr appeared on the ridge, turning to see his brother Sirius walking down the path. "Wait up brother!" He called, hurrying after him. His rather large frame made it difficult for him to run for long, but he made it up to his kinsman. "Sirius, do you really think he was here?"

"Hush Achnar, but yes." The older, considerably more slim brother said. "But our father is a smart man, he will have expected us to follow him."

"So he's not here anymore?" he asked as they entered the valley.

Sirius ignored his brother, looking around intently. His eyes settled on one of the little round stone huts. After a moment of complex thought, he started towards it. It was a little further back then the rest, and had what appeared to have once been a vegetable garden out in front of it. Sirius paused at a stone in the garden, which had something written on it in charcoal. Most of the words had been washed away in the rain, but he seemed unconcerned with what it had actually said. He knelt down, tracing the remaining letters, staring without blinking. "Achanr!" He snapped at his brother, who had been trying to reach a fruit on a nearby tree.

"What is it?" he asked reproachfully.

"This grave is in English."

"So?" he turned back to the tree.

"ENGLISH, Achnar! English! The people of this area read and wrote only Actairian." He said exasperatedly.

Achnar blinked, "So that mean that Atrus-"

"Yes!" He groaned and stood up and marched into the stone hut, pausing again at the entrance, where he found a hook, that still had some buckskin on it. He fingered it thoughtfully. After a moment he stood and looked around, "He cleaned It out, but he was definitely here, Achnar." he said, though he sounded more like he was talking to himself then to the other.

Achanr just nodded, eating his fruit now, not really paying attention. Though he was only a year younger then Sirius, he had always acted like a bored child.

The older one suddenly moved quickly out of the hut, and then looked around a little. Spotting the burnt remains of the shack, he moved forward, calling for Achnar to follow him. As it was day, they could clearly see some of the burn remains, but Sirius didn't take interest in most of it. He sifted through it all with his foot, looking for something in particular. When he saw it, he bent down and got it out of the coals. The remains of a linking book...

Achanr took it from his brother and brushed off the soot, and the name stood out on the cover, faded and burnt, but still there: Velisahn.


End file.
